Our East Annex displays historic railroad artifacts related to the maintenance and upkeep of the railroad right of way. Here you will find displays containing tools, lanterns, documentation and even china ware used in support of railroad operations. Come in and learn about the people responsible for keeping the trains running!
In our North Annex, we maintain operating model railroad displays in all of the currently available scales. These range from the tiniest Z scale trains to the massive Garden scale model trains. Stop by the annex and watch all of the exciting action available in 4 different operating displays, chat with the operators and learn about the possibilities of creating a miniature world of your own.
HO DISPLAY
Large Trains Display (S-Scale, O-Scale, G-Scale)
N Scale
Z Scale
Our newly installed combinations N scale layout. This was created from 2 separate layouts that were donated to the museum and combined into a single display.
This layout combines G, O and S scale displays for a lot of train action. Many hidden gems are located here for sharp eyed folks to discover.
Representing some of Amtraks new colors. Our Cameraman should be careful, standing on the tracks can be very dangerous!
Two Southern Pacific AC class locomotives hard at work moving general freight made up of an interesting mix of 40 cars.
Moving both commodities and people is what railroads do. In this video we see a sample of both.
Modern trains are usually made up of "blocks" of cars carrying the same commodity. These are known as unit trains and can be up to 100 plus cars. Here is a small sample of a unit coal train.
Years ago, the railroads all had contracts with the United States Post Office to move mail across the country. Airlines and trucking grabbed this business from the railroads and made a huge cut in the railroads profits. Visible is an example of a railroad's fast mail train service.
The Auto Train is a popular service started by the Richmond Fredericksburg & Potomac and the Seaboard Coastline railroads in December of 1971 and continues today under Amtrak. In this video we see a model representation of that service.
You never know what you will see on the HO Display. We have a Reading (pronounced Redding) 4-8-4 loco Hauling coal for home heating, followed by a Norfolk and Western 4-6-0 Hailing Christmas Trees and passengers.